


What's in a Name?

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [52]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6253858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>author's choice, author's choice, hating the name your parents gave you.</i> Post-series. Rodney and John on Atlantis, contemplating their names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a Name?

"There's only one Johnny Cash song I really like," Rodney said. He and John were sitting on the balcony outside the control tower; this was their last trip to Atlantis for a while, and they were taking advantage of the Pegasus night sky.  
  
"Oh? Which one?" John tipped his head back and gazed at the stars.  
  
"A Boy Named Sue, obviously."  
  
"It was a Shell Silverstein poem first," John said.  
  
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Thank you, English Teacher."  
  
"But I can see how you'd enjoy that song." John nodded thoughtfully.  
  
"I relate to it," Rodney said. "It was awful, growing up. The first day of school every year was so embarrassing, because the teachers would call out _Meredith McKay?_ And they'd look so confused when I answered. One teacher accused me of lying to him. And then I got to middle school, and I had multiple teachers the first day of school, and getting them to call me Rodney was almost impossible. Until college."  
  
"A lot of names that are girls' names now used to be boys' names," John said. "Tracy. Stacy. Leslie. Ashley. Carol. Donna. First time I'd ever heard Meredith for a guy, though."  
  
"Yes, well, my parents missed the memo about the name-gender update," Rodney snapped.  
  
John reached out, laced his fingers through Rodney's and squeezed. "You'll always be Rodney to me," he said gently.  
  
Rodney huffed, exasperated. He knew when John was messing with him, but before this most recent trip through the gate he'd had a phone call from his mother about Jeannie and it had gone very badly. "I know. Sorry. Didn't mean to yell."  
  
John leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and Rodney knew his apology was accepted.  
  
"I wouldn't really consider Rossum my parents, but they gave me some stupid names," he said. "My designation, Foxtrot? The handlers made so many 'foxy' jokes. And I remember laughing stupidly, because they were laughing and I didn't get the joke but I knew I was supposed to laugh."  
  
Rodney tightened his hand around John's.  
  
"And then the imprint names. Brendan Dean, the NSA agent? Two first names. Always a poor choice. And Julian, the law clerk? They gave him a name that sounded like a girl's name - Julia - to highlight the fact that he was terribly unmasculine and a little awkward. Granted, he was supposed to be the perfect designer-clerk, good at his job but bad with people, so it worked, but still. And don't get me started on Brian Kohler-Voss. Totally playing on the whole German Freud thing, because he was a psych major. And let's not forget Traci-with-an-i, because if it ends with an 'i', she's got to be a bimbo, and why would a transgender girl be serious?"  
  
Rodney sneaked a sidelong glance at him. "Is that why you call some of them by their jobs? Like Architect and English Teacher and Physicist and Songwriter and Pianist?"  
  
"No. A lot of the time Topher was lazy and used either John or Joe or some other variant of Joseph for the imprint names if the client didn't specify a name for me, so I needed another way to tell them apart," John said.  
  
"Oh. Do you hate John, then?"  
  
"No. My mother gave that to me, so..."  
  
"It's better than Meredith."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Rodney stood up, pulled John with him. "Come on. Teyla's about to go announce the name of her next child."  
  
"If it's a girl, she could name it Meredith after you."  
  
"...True."


End file.
